Camp Fire: Through a photographer’s lens

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Classic cars burn at a home on Neal Road in Paradise as a wildfire swept through the town Nov. 8. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Six weeks later, the flames are out, the grass is turning green, but residents still remain evacuated in much of Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Pushed by winds late Saturday evening, November 10, 2018, the Camp Fire heats up east of Highway 70 near Yankee Hill, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Concow Ridge is charred and denuded of plant life, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018, above the community of Concow, Calif., one month after the deadly Camp Fire roared over the hill from Pulga killing 85 people. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Flames burst from a tree in Paradise on the first night of Camp Fire. Wind-whipped flames earlier had spread at a rate of one football field per second. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Abandoned vehicles line the main artery in Paradise on Nov. 9, the day after many fleeing residents were trapped by the overwhelming flames of the Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Juanita McClish sits on a curb Nov. 8 after she and her husband lost their home in the Camp Fire raging through Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Betsy Ann Cowley walks in the ashes of her house in Pulga, Calif., Monday, November 12, 2018. Hers was likely among the first homes destroyed in the Camp Fire given its proximity to the PG&E transmission tower suspected of being the site of ingnition. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Fire burns near PG&E transmission towers, November 12, east Pulga. The first report of the deadly Camp Fire was made near another tower on this line. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

The Cypress Meadows Post-Acute nursing facility sits in ruins in Paradise. The staff reported they safely evacuate all their patients. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Archeology students from the University of Nevada help search for victims of the Camp Fire on Nov. 11 in a mobile home park in Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Angie Dodge (right) hugs her neighbor Tama Czarnecki on Dec. 5 after returning to each of their homes destroyed by the Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea delivers the grim news Nov. 12 that 13 more human remains were recovered that day for a total of 42 fatalities, making it the deadliest wildfire in California history. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea was tasked at nightly press conferences to update the toll on human lives. At least 86 people died in the deadliest wildfire in state history. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Search teams in rain gear continue their hunt for human remains in Paradise on Wednesday. The rains were the first to hit the area since the deadly Camp Fire nearly two weeks prior. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

The Senator Theatre in downtown Chico hosts a common sentiment for firefighters who, with the rain’s help, finally contained the Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Ryan and Kim Spainhower return to their Paradise home Nov. 18 for the first time since it was destroyed by the Camp Fire. In it they found little, but they did find a pressed coin from their honeymoon with the inscription, “Kim & Ryan soulmates 4ever. Good Luck.” Kim says it was better than finding her jewelry. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Ryan and Kim Spainhower returned to their Paradise home Nov. 18 and found little in the ashes except this stamped coin from their honeymoon with the inscription, “Kim & Ryan soulmates 4ever. Good Luck.” Kim says it was better than finding her jewelry. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Hundreds of pets were rescued after the fire. A wall of pictures shows those still waiting to be reunited with their owners returning to Paradise in mid-December. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A stray dog rescued from the Camp Fire is sheltered by the North Valley Animal Disaster Group at the municipal airport in Chico, Nov. 20, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A lone burro found wandering in smoke-choked Highway 70 is tied to a rode sign awaiting an animal rescue group November 9, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

David Little, editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record newspaper and fourth generation Chico native, surveys the ruins of the century-old Covered Bridge, two days after it was destroyed by the Camp fire, November, 10, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Enterprise-Record photographer Bill Husa shows what’s left of one his old cameras while sifting through the ashes of his Paradise home. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

The last time Tamra Fisher saw her car it was on fire as she abandoned it escaping the Camp Fire in Paradise. Seeing it for the first time six weeks later, on Dec. 20, Fisher hoped to salvage some family heirlooms from the ashes. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Tamra Fisher finds a gold nugget in her car Dec. 20, six weeks after nearly losing her life in it trying to escape the Camp Fire in Paradise. The nugget was panned by her grandfather out of nearby Butte Creek years ago. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Tamra Fisher hugs Larry Laczko, the man who saved her from dying in the Camp Fire, during a reunion, Dec. 11 in Paradise. Fisher’s VW Beetle, loaded with her three dogs and family heirlooms, caught fire as she tried to evacuate. Larry drove by in his truck and opened his door. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Knowing it would be a monochromatic scene of ash and soot after being destroyed by the Camp Fire, Cindy Hoover brought a bouquet of flowers as she and her husband John Christensen returned home for the first time in Paradise on Dec. 5. They left the flowers on their picnic table, one of the few things that survived. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A shattered tree hangs precariously on Honey View Terrace in Paradise on Dec. 13, five weeks after the deadly Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

While Debbie’s Quilt Shop managed to survive the Camp Fire flames in Paradise, it was pierced by a falling tree that remained wedged in the store’s roof more than a month later. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Debbie’s Quilt Shop Paradise, Calif., damaged by a tree that fell into it during the deadly Camp Fire, remains a mess a month later on Dec. 13. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Debbie Andres, owner of Debbie’s Quilt Shop in Paradise, holds up a damaged quilt from the 1930s, singed when a tree crashed through her roof during the Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Coffey Strong members, survivors of last year’s deadly Santa Rosa fires, offer advice to Camp Fire survivors on how to rebuild on Dec. 11 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chico. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – DECEMBER 11: The ruins of a home destroyed by last month’s Camp Fire is silhouetted against a Butte County sunset, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A visitor pays respects to the victims of the Camp Fire as they are remembered by 86 crosses installed on the Skyway in Paradise on Dec. 21. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

An “Open” sign rises out of the rubble of a business in the Old Town Plaza shopping center in Paradise on Dec. 11, more than a month after being destroyed by the Camp Fire. Authorities at that time were still deciding how and when to open the center of the city to evacuated residents. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Third grader Brian Slater is excited to return to school a month after evacuating Concow. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Students and teachers from Concow return to school Dec. 3, 2018, at a replacement campus in Oroville. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A Christmas stocking hangs Dec. 12 from the hearth of a home destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

It’s a distinction no one ever wanted: Being a survivor of the most destructive fire in state history.

But it’s one that residents in Paradise, along with neighboring communities of Concow and Magalia, now sadly own.

Thank you, Camp Fire.

Santa Rosa residents earned that deadly mantel last year when they lost 5,600 structures in the Tubbs Fire. It was a short-lived record, though. Thirteen months later, Butte County took it, having lost three times that many in the Camp Fire.

When survivors of the state’s two worst infernos met recently in Chico to compare notes and offer solace to one another, a Paradise woman stood up and, to much applause, hoped aloud that no one else should ever take the designation from them. It stays here in Butte County, she said.

For all our sakes, I hope she’s right.

There are basically two seasons for California news photographers, rainy season and fire season. And at some point, usually mid-October, the switch happens and yellow Nomex fire suits get replaced with rain slickers and rubber boots.

On Nov. 8, David Little, editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record, sent a request to their sister newspapers in the Bay Area asking for help in covering a late-season firestorm.

Bill Husa, their veteran staff photographer, was out on leave. He’d sent a few harrowing images from Paradise where he’s lived and worked for nearly two decades, but he was evacuating for his life and they needed help quick.

That’s how I came to be your temporary E-R staff photographer for the next six weeks.

Covering wildfires has become almost de rigueur for California news photographers. Sadly, it’s getting as routine as shooting county fairs or Friday night football.

But it’s getting worse.

Three times in my career I’ve covered wildfires that have held that awful moniker of “most destructive.” First was the Tunnel Fire (Santa Barbara County, 1990), then the Oakland Hills fire (1991) and the Tubbs Fire (2017). Now it’s the Camp Fire.

Between the four, 27,990 structures have been destroyed, 134 lives lost.

Each time I’ve thought to myself, that one is going to remain the worst.

Each time I’ve been wrong.

On my last day in Paradise, shortly before Christmas, I was feeling like that out-of-town photographer that I actually was. Just another one of those parachute journalists who land in other people’s misery, only to go home later to their warm beds and the next news cycle.

My home is San Francisco, a town that couldn’t be any more different than Paradise.

Yet, like Paradise, San Francisco, too, was once nearly wiped off the face of the earth. (No, I didn’t cover the 1906 earthquake and fire.)

Obviously, San Francisco came back.

Certainly, Paradise will, too.

I’ve seen the resilience of this community.

I’ve seen the hope symbolized by the lone Christmas stocking someone placed on the remaining hearth of a destroyed home.

Back at his destroyed home in the heart of Paradise, colleague Bill Husa, the Enterprise-Record photographer, dug through the remnants of his charred house. He found a few Nikon skeletons, but no sign of the deep archives that held his life’s work.

He thanked me for coming and covering the fire.

“Nah, Bill, you’d do the same for me,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess so. It’s what we do.”

“I hope that never happens,” I added.

We laughed.

Bill has not taken a photograph since Nov. 8. It was one of fire surrounding Paradise as he evacuated.

He’s not really sure what that the next photo should be. Enterprise-Record readers may find out soon. He plans to come back to work in early January, offering that intimate view of a community’s rebirth that only an insider can give.